Comment by p0w3n3d
1 month ago
Meanwhile all the phones dropping jack because Apple started it. Official reason is to "waterproof phones"
1 month ago
Meanwhile all the phones dropping jack because Apple started it. Official reason is to "waterproof phones"
The most frustrating part is when Apple dropped the jack we laughed at the "courage" bit, Apple's given reasons where already seen as bullshit, Samsung had their finger pointing moment.
And it just went on, Apple weathered the critics, the other makers also dropped it, and at some point there was just nowhere to go for anyone still wanted a 3.5 jack with a decent phone.
I agree the loss of the 3.5mm jack is a short-sighted and poor decision. There is at least one mitigation, which is the ability to recover the jack through a USB-C DAC. Apple sells them for USD10. I have several, in the car and in my backpack.
It's not a good solution though. In particular I find the USB-C port gets worn out pretty quickly. Its also easy to lose the dongle and of course it's more complicated to setup. (I'm not sure how to articulate the "it's more complicated" part. Adding the dongle elevates the action of "plug in headphones" from something you can do without attention to something that requires attention, and I don't like that.)
Also, seemingly without exception, the dongle itself is fragile and ends up causing constant crackling after a while.
Can't you just leave a dongle on any wired headphones you have? Assuming you only use them with your phone and computer and don't have a CD player or something.
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Get a set of wired headphones without a built-in cord. Then you can use any USB-C to 3.5 male cord like normal.
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They’re just responding to the market. The vast majority of people don’t care about this. Personally, I’d rather have two minutes more battery life than a headphone jack.
It’s annoying to have non-mainstream preferences in an area where economies of scale mean every product needs to have mass market appeal. But you might as well complain about the tide coming in.
Do you have a source that supports your claim, that the market asked for 3.5 mm jacks to go away?
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The jacks are a physical impediment for slim phones. An adapter costs $3 if you still want it. It’s not a bad trade.
I see the point for ultra slim phones. Except the only phones that are slim enough to have their thickest point thinner than that have only started to come up recently.
Imagine the same argument for USB-C: at some point phones will be too slim to allow for that port, should every maker start dropping it right now ? That would be nonsense.
On adapters, it's no panacea: you still want the USB port available. Split adapters exist, but most of them only allow for charging, and the charging rate is also usually miserable.
You could say people who appreciated that should just eat it and feel in their bones how much the world doesn't care about them, that would be fair. Now staying sour about it is also one's prerogative.
PS: The biggest part for me is every other devices I own still having a pretty good jack. Laptops still have it, game consoles, VR headsets, TVs, high fidelity portable players, cars etc. So keeping around a very good headphone pair is still an enjoyable thing, except for the damn phones. Even in XL sizes. They're the only one needing a dongle, and regardless of the price that sucks.
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Maybe, but Apple doesn’t make them thinner anyway so the argument is invalid. iPhone 6S with headphone jack: 7.1mm thick. iPhone 17 is 7.95mm thick.
Phones are already way slimmer than they should be. Now we have top-heavy "slim" phones with huge bulges for cameras*, 50% less battery life, reduced performance because of thermal issues, glued together in favor of screws and rubber seals, wasting weight and space on additional strengthening and internal routing.
Just because people think it looks neater than the more practical alternative.
The S2 had an amazing form factor - also with a small bulge, but at the bottom. It's a thousand times nicer to hold and carry than pretty much anything that came after. The S5 was fine too (waterproof AND you could pop open the back to swap the battery, if you can believe it!)
It's silly how much more ergonomic phones feel that don't have to compensate for an extra half millimeter.
* Many phones had this, but it's getting really bad now. Older phones typically also had the lens recessed to protect it, with a slim border around it. No more space for that now.
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3$ adapter will have low quality DAC
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Most ADCs in consumer products were crap anyway (with the exception of Apple, who for a long time used the widely beloved Wolfson DACs).
If you want actual quality... be ready to shell out a bit of money [1].
[1] https://www.amazon.de/Qudelix-Bluetooth-Adaptive-unsymmetris...
It's not the official reason, but also worth noting that many waterproof devices have headphone jacks.
This has been a lie since day one. The Sony Xperia line has been waterproof for over 10 years and continues to have a headphone jack and an SD card slot. That with their minimal Android tweaks is the main reason to even consider their phones.
The official reason was, famously and ridiculously, "courage". Apple further explained that space is at a premium, listed the many things competing for that space, and noted that a large, single-purpose legacy connector no longer made sense.
A lot of Apple's strategic choices are driven by products that take 5, 10, or sometimes 20 years to realize. For example, the forthcoming foldable iPhone (and the proving ground for many related decisions, the iPhone Air) was on roadmaps literally a decade before a decision like this reverberates through released products.
Putting a high-quality DAC in a dongle wasn't a terrible solution (many phones with analog jacks have poor ones), and today hundreds of headphones¹ courageously have native USB-C support.
¹ https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/products/usb-c-headphones/ci/...
Apple is very late to the foldable phones now, not sure that's the best example
> Apple is very late to the foldable phones now, not sure that's the best example
“PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” — Palm CEO Ed Colligan, 2006, https://www.engadget.com/2006-11-21-palms-ed-colligan-laughs...
“A wizard is never late, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to.” — Gandalf the Gray
:)
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Regardless, the point of mentioning it is that Apple commonly makes decisions that can seem bizarre to people who don't consider systemic and longer-term reasons why they might've been made. Another micro-example of this that comes to mind is Tahoe's mostly-reviled chonky window borders, which along with many other gradual UX changes over years, absolutely foreshadow touchscreen Macbooks.
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I just don’t know a single real person that still wants to use wired earphones with their phone. To me it’s the same as complaining that an artist only has CDs, not records.
I want to use the extremely simple and reliable direct interface and inexpensive cheap earphones and patch cables that I can buy in any reasonable electronics store for low markup. They are all passive components.
Adding an external sound card introduces variables outside of manufacture control, the quality, latency, and drive power all at the mercy of some random integrator.
My phone is easily thick enough to accommodate a 3.5mm port, and it can't be that difficult to waterproof such a jack, which should also make reasonable cleaning easy if it's ever required.
That might all be true, but at the same time most people don’t care or prefer wireless earphones.
The security, performance, usability and reliability of wired headphones will always be superior to wireless. There is just no substitute for the simplicity of an uninterrupted piece of copper carrying an analog signal. The convenience of having no wires simply isn't worth the downgrade in these other aspects.
Your opinion is valid, but irrelevant. The above comment said that you’re a minority and that they’ve never met a person irl that shares your opinion. I can say I’ve also never met anyone who shares that opinion.
Also of note is that I used to care a lot about sound quality, and owned very expensive wired IEMs until 2 years ago. I was annoyed when I switched to a phone without a jack, but now I’m used to it and don’t particularly miss it.
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Wired headphones have no latency. AptX-LL are rare in the good quality headsets.
This right here, especially for gaming.
When I use my Sony XM5 Bluetooth headphones, the latency is noticeable. Watching videos, the lips don't match the audio. Playing games, I see things before I hear them. It's probably in the ~150-200 ms range for latency.
While gaming, I use a different set of wireless headphones that use a proprietary dongle. If they have any latency at all, I don't notice it.
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Good wired headphones (or in-ear monitors) still sound noticeably better than wireless. This makes a big difference when listening to music.
Makes sense, I guess it comes down to how you use your phone, if it's your primary high fidelity music listening device, then you would totally need an audio jack. My guess is simply that that's the minority of people.